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Travel/house insurance issues? Let us know.

We’re well aware of underhand tactics regarding jargon-riddled payment schemes, deliberate pension confusion and general deception when it comes to your money.

And, in light of the first findings from the Financial Conduct Authority’s probe into travel and house insurance claims handling, we want to underline yet further examples of dodgy dealing.

While the watchdog admitted that its findings didn’t suggest “deliberate” attempts at misleading customers, they had a number of critical things to say about house and travel insurers.

Due to what it described as “poor processes or management”, the watchdog wasn’t happy with “how in-bound claims calls are recorded and used”; “communication with clients whilst (a claim) is being progressed”; “how medical conditions are dealt with in travel insurance”; “handling of claims with long chains of delegation”; and, crucially, the “clarity of product documentation”.

In other words, calls are handled badly, poor communication is an issue, potentially very serious medical issues aren’t dealt with adequately, customers often have to wait for long periods on the phone as they are passed back and forth between different call handlers and the policies themselves are written badly.

This is all needless and to one end: to make something that you have paid for unnecessarily difficult to deal with and get a payout for. From our point of view it’s another example of money-making organisations being pretty dodgy and trying to keep hold of as much of your money as they can get away with. If this isn’t the case, why not make life easier for you, the customer?

We at Plain English Campaign want to make it clear: if you have any such issues with travel or home insurance claims, let us know. (You can email us at info@plainenglish.co.uk.) We can bring your example to attention and make sure that any such incidents are given the kind of coverage they deserve. We can also have our say about them, on your behalf.